The question seems oddly charming to me because I might have asked the same question at the time. You see, I had had a rough go of it up to that point. A bad

The question seems oddly charming to me because I might have asked the same question at the time. You see, I had had a rough go of it up to that point. A bad situation had led me to drop out of high school and to enter the Army. My dad had promised a college education so the whole time in the Army, what kept me going was that as soon as my ETS date rolled around I was going back to school. You see, I wanted to be a computer programmer. But when I got out and asked about college, dad told me the day I raised my hand to join the Army that I had forfeited my college fund. That I was a man now and had to make my own way. So at 21 I decided that come hell or high water I was going to be an awesome computer programmer and that no matter how long it took I was going to have a college degree. In 1987 getting access to a computer though, was somewhat difficult for a long-haired high school dropout. But I managed by weaseling my way into a SysAdmin job - herding a pair of AT&T 3b2 machines. I had no idea what I was doing, having only read about Unix from library books. But I knew enough to get access to two multi-user Unix machines and an idtools diskette. At that job I saved enough money to pay for a Computer Programming course at a now defunct school called Control Data Institute. The job placement office got me my first programming job in 1989 - hacking C for a consulting firm. That btw, was the last time the Control Data Institute credential ever helped me to get a job. And getting past HR without a college degree has always been a challenge. Without it, you are not "a member of the club". But somehow I've slugged it out for a couple more decades. I haven't always been a programmer -- I've spent about half that time as a SysAdmin -- I've even spent some of it homeless. But it turns out in retrospect that I have in fact spent most of my adult life doing what I wanted to do and it has so far been a messy, scruffy and somewhat scrappy success. But a success nevertheless. I don't think I'm an awesome programmer yet but I'm still working on it. I do know that I'm better than most but sadly it's just because I'm merely competent while most are incompetent. Stay in the business and you'll see what I mean. And eventually I'll get that college degree too. Extra points to the universe if I get to do it as poetically as Woz did. So now that I've rambled on and typed more than most will want to read, I finally come to an answer: the only way you can fail to succeed is to give up. So suck it up young man, and dig in for a long fight. Illegitimi non carborundum :-)